Twitter Studies--The New Science

Interested in Twitter? So is the Library of Congress. So much so, in fact, that they are acquiring the microblogging service's complete archives: every single tweet from the very beginning. Scott McLemee has an enlightening article on the acquisition and the reasoning behind it over at Inside Higher Ed. Here are some of the highlights:

Why does the Library of Congress want the archives? To give scholars a chance at studying it. The librarians hope to process the material to make it more readily available to researchers, but that's not to say that research has waited until completion.

"The research, so far, tends to fall into two broad categories. One body focuses on the properties of Twitter as a medium. (Or, what amounts to a variation on the same thing, as one part of an emerging new-media ecosystem.) The other approach involves analyzing gigantic masses of Twitter data to find evidence concerning public opinion or mood."


"A recent paper by Mor Naaman and others from the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University uses a significant variation on this concept, the “social awareness stream,” to label Twitter and Facebook, among other formats. Social awareness streams, according to Naaman et al., “are typified by three factors distinguishing them from other communication: a) the public (or personal-public) nature of the communication and conversation; b) the brevity of posted content; and, c) a highly connected social space, where most of the information consumption is enabled and driven by articulated online contact networks.”"


"A different methodology was used in “Modeling Public Mood and Emotion: Twitter Sentiment and Socio-Economic Phenomena” by John Bollen of Indiana University and two other authors. They collected all public tweets from August 1 to December 20, 2008 and harvested from them data about the content that could be plugged into “a well-established psychometric instrument, the Profile of Mood States” which “measures six individual dimensions of mood, namely Tension,Depression, Anger, Vigor, Fatigue, and Confusion.” This sounds like something from one of Woody Allen’s better movies."


"“Tweets may be regarded,” write Bollen and colleagues, “as microscopic instantiations of mood.” And they speculate that the microblogging system may do more than reflect shifts of public temper: “The social network of Twitter may highly affect the dynamics of public sentiment…[O]ur results are suggestive of escalating bursts of mood activity, suggesting that sentiment spreads across network ties.”"


See the full article:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee296?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

The Inventor of TV on TV

 "There's nothing on it worthwhile, and we're not going to watch it in this household, and I don't want it in your intellectual diet."

--Kent Farnsworth, recalling his father's (Philo Farnsworth) attitude towards television, which he invented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth

NY Times: No Sex Please, We're Middle Class

What are the consequences of an over-sexualized media establishment?

"Visually, American men remain perpetual boys, as shown by the bulky T-shirts, loose shorts and sneakers they wear from preschool through midlife. The sexes, which used to occupy intriguingly separate worlds, are suffering from over-familiarity, a curse of the mundane. There’s no mystery left."


"Furthermore, thanks to a bourgeois white culture that values efficient bodies over voluptuous ones, American actresses have desexualized themselves, confusing sterile athleticism with female power. Their current Pilates-honed look is taut and tense — a boy’s thin limbs and narrow hips combined with amplified breasts. Contrast that with Latino and African-American taste, which runs toward the healthy silhouette of the bootylicious Beyoncé."


Check out the full article from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27Paglia.html

And now for something a little different

An interesting tidbit from Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception:

We see, then, that Christianity and alcohol do not and cannot mix. Christianity and mescalin seem to be much more compatible. This has been demonstrated by many tribes of Indians, from Texas to as far north as Wisconsin. Among these tribes are to be found groups affiliated with the Native American Church, a sect whose principal rite is a kind of Early Christian agape, or love feast, where slices of peyote take the place of the sacramental bread and wine. These Native Americans regard the cactus as God's special gift to the Indians, and equate its effects with the workings of the divine Spirit.

Huxley got a little bit into mind-altering substances later in his life. The Doors of Perception describes one of his 'trips' and continues with an exposition of the beneficial use of these substances and their transcendent religious properties. This book is what gave Jim Morrison his band name: The Doors.



Do Christianity and mescalin mix better than Christianity and alcohol? In my experience, it seems like most Catholics would disagree...

Last Week’s News: Internet Kill Switch

“This is especially true of our media. They are put out long before they are thought out. In fact, their being put outside us tends to cancel the possibility of their being thought of at all."

-- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964

Last week saw the announcement of a new US Senate bill that would give President Obama control over the Internet in emergency situations (See the Huffington Post article). US Senator Jay Rockefeller is a proponent of the bill, and wonders if the national security threat that the internet opens us up to is grave that “we would have been better off if we never invented the internet (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8PCmLPPVnA). The bill and Sen. Rockefeller’s support has a lot of people on the internet up in arms, but Sen. Rockefeller seems to be ignorant of the history of the internet. The web was not invented as a new medium to do business or to meet new friends on Facebook. Of, course, it does both of those things great.

The web started as ARPAnet, funded by the Department of Defense under the Advanced Research Project Agency. It began as a program to connect research at various universities and government research labs across the country, so that scientists and scholars could have easier access to information. The key difference between ARPAnet and any previous communications system is in the kind of network it creates. Radio, print, television and the like all depended on centralized networks to operate, meaning that all users connected to one central source of information. ARPAnet, and now the internet, function on a distributed network, meaning that there is no central host of information; if a connection is severed, information can easily be rerouted and still reach its final destination.

From a military perspective, this kind of communications network is much more robust. Though the Director of ARPA at the time of ARPAnet’s conception, Charles Herzefeld, assures us that the network “was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack,” it is very clear that this would be major motivation for funding from the Department of Defense. Even if this was not the intent from the beginning of the project, Herzfeld notes that the military applications were in their minds, and were later developed in conjunction with the Air Force.

The most significant benefit of a distributed network for military purposes is there is no central communications infrastructure that can be destroyed to wipe out information or communications between cities. It is easily seen that an attack on a radio tower would terminate any communications being transmitted from that tower and leave those it served in the dark. The existence of something like ARPAnet makes a centralized attack like that obsolete, but it also makes necessary a new kind of attack.

Now, back to Sen. Rockefeller’s remark: “Would we be better off if we never invented the internet?” Well, it is a actually a good question to think about. In terms of military power and vulnerability, how well does the internet serve us? Clearly, the terrorist attacks that Rockefeller and Lieberman fear are a product of the internet, but its invention obsolesced the kind of centralized attack that was so feared during the Cold War. Could we have foreseen this development?

A True Solidarity: Exploring Christian Community in the Thought of Jacques Ellul

One of Ellul’s most compelling arguments is his analysis of the social alienation experienced by the individual within the technological society. In reading Ellul, I wanted to uncover his thought regarding a possible Christian response to this alienation. Clifford Christians’ article “Ellul on Solution” (1981), in which Dr. Christians discusses the frustrating nature of Ellul’s “heavy individualism,” was a great starting point and gave me a filter for reading Ellul on community. The three-pronged approach Dr. Christians identifies within Ellul’s writing—awareness, transformation, and the concrete action based on these two—is most clear when it is understood in the context of Ellul’s Christianity as a response to alienation, and we will approach his thought in this order (p. 154).

Awareness

As Ellul (1967b) says, “The first duty of a Christian intellectual today is the duty of awareness” (p. 98). Thus, we begin with an exploration of the sociological conditions of our technological society as described by Ellul. The key idea in Ellul’s thought (1965) concerning the topic of alienation and community is the sociological reorganization along technical values accompanying the individualist trend in 19th century Europe (p. 93). Ellul’s concept of the individualist and mass society is integral to understanding the shift away from traditional sociological organization (p. 90). Alienation occurs within the technological society largely due to the value given to the individual, which eclipses the value of any group affiliation (p. 20). Thus, when “the small groups that are an organic fact of the entire society”—such as the family, village, or parish—are broken up, the individual does not become a free, self-made man, but is made defenseless against propaganda and social currents, resulting in “direct integration into mass society” (pp. 90-92). Western, technological society is a society of alienated individuals organized in an unstructured mass.

Ellul reveals the spiritual significance of the sociology of the mass in his Meaning of the City (1970). Here, Ellul describes the mass as a constant force and source of alienation; a “sheet of glass” between every individual that is invisible but completely isolating (p. 125). For Ellul, the mass society is a dangerous spiritual reality. Freedom from this danger comes in the awareness brought by the presence of Jesus (p. 129). The Christian convert has a radically new framework for approaching the mass, the city, and technological society, granting him true awareness of his circumstances and the freedom to change them. His spiritual freedom enables him to work as an acid, decomposing the bonds and structure of alienation within technological society (p. 133).

Transformation

What kind of sociological transformation does this spiritual freedom allow? Ellul treats this question in several books under different terms. In The Technological Society (1964), he discusses “real community,” which is necessarily anti-technical because of its particularism (pp. 207-208). He develops this idea further in Propaganda (1965), with the depiction of “local, organic groups,” which are able to resist psychological technique (propaganda) and to be well off materially, spiritually, and emotionally (p. 91). Furthermore, in The Political Illusion (1967a), Ellul advocates for the creation of “positions in which we reject and struggle with the state,” which take the form of “social, political, intellectual, or artistic bodies, associations, interest groups, or economic or Christian groups totally independent of the state, yet capable of opposing it, able to reject its pressures as well as its controls, and even its gifts” (p. 221). These associations must be intellectually, materially, and morally independent of the state in order to be truly confrontational and anti-technical, and their existence as such re-introduces value systems that are not technical in nature (p. 222). Nevertheless, what is it that allows the real community present within local, organic, independent groups to be truly independent and anti-technical?

The answer for Ellul is, of course, that they must be Christian. In The Presence of the Kingdom (1967b), we find a similar discussion regarding the role of the church in the technological society. For Ellul, Christians ought to create a new style of life that “permits them to escape from the stifling pressure of our present form of civilization” (p. 46). Most importantly, this endeavor is “a work that is both collective and individual,” and “necessarily a corporate act” (pp. 122-3). In fact, an essential condition for this new style of life is “the substitution of a true solidarity among Christians (a solidarity—voluntarily created by obedience to the will of God) for the sociological solidarity, purely mechanical in character, which is being dinned into our ears, and which people want to make the basis of the new world” (p. 124).

Concrete Action

Undoubtedly, there is overlap between Ellul’s ideas of real community, organic groups, independent associations, and true solidarity among Christians. Furthermore, there is an inherent opposition in his writing between the sociological forms of our society and the responsibilities of Christians. We would misunderstand Ellul, however, if we took him to be advocating a return to an idyllic past. Ellul’s ideas regarding dialectic and the ecological effects of technique prevent him from valuing any historical situation over any other; there is no dialectical progress, and regression is impossible. There is only change. Thus, Ellul is hesitant to advocate any concrete plan of action.

This is often what people find most frustrating about Ellul, yet he is simply attempting to avoid creating a group of his own followers, leaving the reader with great responsibility. It is difficult to find any concrete solution in Ellul’s writing, but this is only because Ellul knows that problems must be addressed at the level of the real man (1967b p. 82). What then is the significance of community in all this? Ellul (1976) answers in his typically overstated fashion: “the particularity of the individual makes no sense and has no value unless it finds expression in a community” (p. 296). Accordingly, we are to understand that Christ calls his followers out of technological alienation into communion with the Church, as a body that may prophetically point to the ever-imminent Kingdom of God.

Works Cited

Christians, C. G. (1981). Ellul on Solution: An Alternative but No Prophecy. In C. G. Christians and J. M. Van Hook (Ed.), Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays (pp.147-165). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Ellul, J. (1964). The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books.

---. (1965). Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. New York: Vintage Books.

---. (1967a). The Political Illusion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

---. (1967b). The Presence of the Kingdom. Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard.

---. (1970). The Meaning of the City. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing.

---. (1976). The Ethics of Freedom. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing.


This was published in the most recent edition (Spring 2010) of The Ellul Forum. If you like Ellul, you should check them out!

The Heresy(?) of Digital Media

In her book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, Maggie Jackson eloquently, methodically, and compellingly explains the pitfalls of electronic and digital technologies as they become mass media in our society. Her study specifically focuses on the human sense of attention; consisting of awareness, focus, and judgment (215). She proposes that as a result of our often thoughtless acceptance of new media, we have culturally rewired our brains from once was once a print culture to what we may now designate a digital culture (167). Tracing technological artifacts such as the telegraph, the book, surveillance systems, and the fork as well as their place in history, Jackson discusses how their prevalence or decline helps us to understand the organization and values of our society.

In short, her book is a summary of how “the virtual shatters our conceptions of space…simultaneity redefines our notions of time” and “a life of perpetual movement reshapes our relationship to place and what it means to be in the world” (99). Interestingly, Jackson’s survey seems to also describe the development of certain dualistic and docetist tendencies within an American digital society. What does the internet have to do with docetism? What does the history of the fork have to do Cartesian dualism? Through Jackson’s review of our loss of attention, we can see the rise of these cultural commonplaces and their threat to the Church in our changing senses of space, time, and place.

First, let us look at Jackson’s history of our relation to space, time, and place. One of her most provocative assertions within the book is the idea borrowed from Darra Goldstein that “the progress of the fork traces nothing less than the development of Western civilization” (105). The fork did not enter Western life until around the 1600s, and Jackson posits that its “slow infiltration…mirrors Western society’s increasing valuation of the self-conscious individual” (106). Previously, meals in the medieval era as well as life in general were characterized by “an earthy, sensual communality” (106). The introduction of the fork marked a shift from closeness to our earthly surroundings, and Jackson documents our current move away from the fork towards “clean, processed, and unobtrusive foods” that resemble astronaut food (107).

Jackson looks specifically at eating in the medieval era, Victorian era, and the 21^st century, and these divisions show interesting parallels to media history, as the author would like us to realize. Marshall McLuhan, in The Gutenberg Galaxy, notes the difference between manuscript culture and print culture, in that print gave man “an eye for an ear” (27). In this concept, we see how the dominant medium of the age can reorient our relation to space, time, or place. With the introduction of print as a mass medium, “the fission of the senses occurred, and the visual dimension broke away from the other senses” (54). Accordingly, the printed book allows for a different view of the world, on that thoroughly shocks “oral cultures based on memory, discourse, and the interpretation of symbols, such as landmarks” (Jackson 157). Additionally, print culture creates the possibility of relating to the natural environment mediated through road signs, as we do today on our highway system. When print, as with any medium, becomes the mass medium of a society, it truly does create a new environment, a phenomenon that McLuhan explains in Understanding Media (13). Thus, when print became the new environment following the Middle Ages, new values arose, such as individualism and the acceptable use of the fork.

In the same way, Jackson shows that our leaving behind the fork is a sign of leaving behind print culture. Jackson characterizes the readers of today as people who “dance on the surface of a thousand texts, skimming over billions of words in books and magazines, myriad flashing ads, and across the mesmerizing web” (161). This is only possible through our information-wealthy digital technology, and our multi-tasking between e-mail, Twitter, blogs, e-books, and cell phones leads to a “head-down, tunnel vision way of life that values materialism over happiness, productivity over insight and compassion” (95). Moreover, just as print created a new environment and a new way of relating to the natural environment, digital technology as mass media has created the phenomena of “real virtuality,” wherein we experience the virtual world as real (47). While it is intuitive why our new environments become real to us, their effects in relation to our old environments remain significant.

With digital communication, “we can connect with almost anyone and at any time, but the connection is to the person and not to the place” (Jackson 54). As a result, our connection to place is weakened, as is our connection to time and space, since in “a boundaryless world … coming home doesn’t signal the end of the workday” (63). Though physically present at home, we may be working on our Blackberries or connecting with friends on Facebook, remaining emotionally and psychically absent. Accordingly, our idea of the virtual world as real makes sense, as it can easily become the primary way in which we relate to others. Yet, not only is it real; when it is the primary way we interact with others, it becomes more real than physical, face-to-face interaction.

Interestingly, Jackson makes the connection between virtual reality and spirituality, in that cyberspace is “a new, spiritual heaven” (51, see also: Is there a digital afterlife?). Just as mystical religions became popular towards the end of the Roman Empire, decline in Western civilization has sparked a “deep desire to find spiritual meaning in cyberspace” (51). Jackson goes on to consider the idea of virtual cemeteries and video games, but this connection between the virtual and the spiritual is quite significant in regards to digital technology and dualistic tendencies. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, dualism refers to the idea that the mind and body are radically different, and that “the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world.” Characteristic of this way of thinking is Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, in which he defines himself as most essentially a thinking thing, but doubts all else. This kind of doubt betrays a lower value of the material world, and our digital technologies seem to be an extension of this philosophy.

Though Descartes did not explicitly think less of the material world (his meditations attempted to provide certainty for their existence), his assertion of cognition as the essential human quality is obvious in our digital technology. We neglect face-to-face relationships in place of mediated relationships, because relationships are a cognitive, psychological, and emotional phenomenon, having little to do with our bodies. Jackson notes by devaluing unmediated relations, “we are turning away from the messy, unpredictable, and real in life,” as “the virtual becomes the preferred reality” (66).

As our uncritical understanding of the world becomes more dualistic in nature, it would be foolish to think that our faith would remain unaffected. Particularly, the dualistic influence of digital technology evokes memories of gnosticism within the early church. Docetism is the idea “that the one (indivisible) Jesus Christ was completely and absolutely divine, and for that reason was not a real flesh and blood human being” (Ehrman 181). The heresy denies the human incarnation of Christ, positing instead that he merely appeared to be human. A failure to understand the reality of Christ’s incarnation has vast implications for the Church in the world, and Jackson’s advice is especially relevant to Christians unaware of the dualistic tendencies within digital technology.

As we have seen, our relationships to the earth, our food, and even each other are increasingly experienced in less inclusively sensorial ways, as our digital media habituate us to detachment. In response, Jackson promotes “a way to counter our detachment from the world, recover the strength of deep connections, [and] salvage wholeness in perception and thinking” (123). The way to achieve these ends is in recovering our declining skills of attention. For Jackson, attention makes us human, as it is the means by which we are embodied and made aware of our real circumstances (94). Attention is the key to learning, critical thinking, and self-control, and without any of these, we risk losing our ability to effectively and mindfully shape our lives (232-3). It is imperative that as Christians, we hear the urgency of Jackson’s argument, as our lack of understanding the formative effects of digital technology on our ways of thinking about the world is dangerous to our faith. We must reclaim our attention in order to become embodied followers of an incarnational God.

Works Cited

Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Ed. John Cottingham. Cambridge: University Press, 1996.

Ehrman, Bart D. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. Oxford: University Press, 1993.

Jackson, Maggie. Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Ed. W. Terrence Gordon. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 1994.

---. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962.

Robinson, Howard, "Dualism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), .